Tesla appears to be gearing up to introduce its own in-car voice assistant, as indicated by information found in the source code of its latest software update.
Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, has been hinting at the development of a Tesla-branded voice assistant for several years. Earlier, Musk suggested that Tesla could collaborate with his AI startup xAI to deploy its chatbot inside Tesla vehicles.
The latest software update, version 2024.14.3, is currently being rolled out by Tesla and includes several new features. However, Tesla hacker Green, known for uncovering unreleased features in Tesla’s code, has revealed that the update contains code related to the launch of Tesla’s voice assistant.
Other (than the release notes) stuff from 2024.14.3
– Amazon music playback support
– beginning of what looks like "tesla voice assistant" that would be activated by a wakeword-? (Aka car always listening for it), narrated by "Jenny Neutral" voice by Microsoft.— green (@greentheonly) May 1, 2024
Details about the new voice assistant are scarce, but Musk has previously expressed his vision for Tesla vehicles to be fully voice-controlled, with minimal manual input required from drivers.
In addition to the voice assistant, Green’s findings suggest that Tesla is also preparing to introduce a native Amazon Music app in its vehicles. This follows the introduction of a native Audible app, another Amazon product, in a previous software update.
